Three Stonehide Brutes filled the corridor ahead.
Where the Cave Crawlers had been wrong in the way small things were wrong, the Brutes were wrong at scale. Six feet tall each, hunched under the low ceiling, with skin that had calcified into something between hide and stone along their shoulders and forearms, natural armor that had grown into them rather than being put on.
Their hands were the size of dinner plates and ended in blunt fingers that could have been used as clubs on their own. They moved slowly and they moved together and the system threat tag above each of them was considerably less dismissive than the crawlers had been.
"Three targets," Fredrin said, reading the system. "Stonehide classification means standard strikes will bounce off the plating. You have to find the joints."
"I know what Stonehide means," Lisa said shortly, already building heat in her palm. "Eudora center.
I'll soften the plating with sustained fire, Fredrin and Liz take the flanks and work the shoulder joints.
New guy." She looked at Marcus.
"I have a name you know?," Marcus said and moved before she finished.
He came in fast on the left brute's outside angle, the borrowed blade finding the gap between the calcified shoulder and the neck where the stone skin hadn't fully closed, and drove it in with enough force that the brute's head snapped sideways. It didn't drop but it staggered and a stagger was enough.
Liz was already on the right brute, her rune blade burning white against the stone plating, the light making the Brute flinch backward long enough for her to find the joint at the elbow and open it in one clean cut.
Lisa's fire hit the center Brute across the chest in a sustained stream and the stone plating cracked from the thermal pressure, fracture lines running through it like a map, and Fredrin came through the opening before the cracks finished forming.
Forty seconds.
Three Brutes down.
[VOID HARVEST: ACTIVE]
[3 STONEHIDE BRUTES DEFEATED]
[CURRENCY CONVERTED: +18 COINS]
Marcus looked at the notification. Better. The higher the tier the better the conversion. The passive was starting to make itself worthwhile.
[STR: 15 → 16]
[SPD: 20 → 21]
He blinked at the stat increase. Fighting is training, he thought. Every fight makes me stronger. Good to know.
"You're fast," Eudora said, appearing beside him again with the reliability of someone who had decided where they were going to stand and stuck to it. She was checking his coat for damage, running practiced fingers along the fabric. "That coat is doing something."
"Tier A enchantment," Marcus said.
Her eyes widened slightly. "You're walking around in a Tier A item and you said you were new."
"I said I was new to the cave."
She looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone recalculating. Then she smiled, brief and genuine, and went to check on Fredrin.
Liz watched her go. Then looked at Marcus.
"You two talk a lot," she said.
"She's thorough,"
"Is that what that is."
"I'm thinking about recruiting her to our party."
Liz looked at him with the expression of someone who had several responses available and was choosing between them carefully. She settled on: "Right."
Then she turned and kept walking and Marcus followed and the cave went deeper around them.
The next two encounters came in quick succession, a pack of six crawlers that the group handled without breaking formation, then a pair of Brutes guarding a narrow section of corridor that required Marcus to take a hit he hadn't fully dodged.
It caught him across the shoulder and sent him into the wall hard enough to crack the stone behind him.
He pushed off it immediately.
"Won't you use your powers," Liz said from across the corridor, cutting through her own fight without looking away from it.
"Can't always rely on him," Marcus said, finding his footing. "I need to get stronger."
"Strategy."
"Your shoulder is strategy?"
"Woman focus." He came back at the Brute from a lower angle this time, below the plating, and finished it before it recovered from surprise.
Liz dropped her own target and looked at him with the specific expression she reserved for when he said things that made sense and she didn't want to admit it.
"Fine," she said. "But next time lead with the dodge."
"Noted."
Eudora healed the shoulder in thirty seconds without being asked, her hands steady, her eyes focused on the work. Marcus watched her work without saying anything.
"Thank you," he said when she finished.
"Don't make it a habit," she said. But not unkindly.
They pushed on.
The cave was changing around them as they went deeper. The glittering mineral walls became less frequent, replaced by older darker stone, the cave rune markings growing more numerous the further in they went, layered over each other like writing that had run out of clean surface.
The air grew heavier. The silver from Liz's blade pushed harder against the dark and the dark pushed back with more effort than it had near the entrance.
Forty minutes in they reached the split.
A junction point, the corridor dividing cleanly into two passages of equal width, each one curving away in a different direction, each one carrying its own particular quality of darkness ahead.
Everyone stopped.
"Two paths," Fredrin said.
"Brilliant observation," Lisa said.
Marcus looked at both passages. The left one was cooler, the air coming out of it carrying the smell of deep stone and old water. The right one was warmer, faintly, with the particular quality of warmth that came from something generating heat rather than sunlight.
"We split," Lisa said. "Each party takes a passage. First to clear their boss wins."
"Wins what," Liz said.
Lisa grinned. "Loser buys dinner. Wherever we end up after this."
Marcus looked at Liz. She looked at him.
"Fine," Marcus said. "Don't take too long."
"Don't fall behind," Lisa shot back.
Eudora looked at Marcus for a moment at the junction. Something in her expression that she kept brief and professional. "Be careful," she said quietly.
"You too," Marcus smirked.
Squad Rambo took the right passage. Their torch light moved away around the curve and disappeared and the silver from Liz's blade filled the space they'd left.
Marcus and Liz stood in the left corridor and the cave went quiet around them.
"Ready?" Liz said.
"Let's go".
They walked.